


she's in control (i will not fold)

by nuclearmuffins



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Anora POV, Anora gets too much hate I love her, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:48:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21738610
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nuclearmuffins/pseuds/nuclearmuffins
Summary: Anora and Aliena Surana hash things out after the Landsmeet.
Relationships: Alistair/Female Surana (Mentioned)
Kudos: 13





	she's in control (i will not fold)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Scotland by the Lumineers.

Anora couldn’t decide if the damask was an insult or not.

Worse,  _ Orlesian _ damask in rich forest green silk, draping her glorified prison cell from ceiling-to-floor, muffling the sound that the clipping of her heels against the floor made. It was far cushier than where she had been kept in Fort Drakon before the Battle of Denerim, but she had been moved here just before the battle and had hated nearly every second she spent here. This room, of all the ones in the palace, the place that had long been her battleground. Ferelden’s coffers after Orlesian independence had been spent on reconstruction, not demolition, and even some three decades the Orlesians had been driven out, the suite of rooms the despot Meghren had built for his clandestine lovers remained intact. No Fereldan slept here, but it had been kept maintained for foreign dignitaries, and if her father knew where she was being kept now he would have flown into a fury. His daughter treated as an outsider in her own nation by a usurper.

Her internal logic argued against her. Really, would Alistair be  _ clever _ enough to use the damask as an insult? Had he even realized the significance of putting Loghain’s daughter in this room not days after he cut her father’s head off? It had been how many weeks since the Landsmeet, but she still clung onto her dignity, refusing to cede her crown. 

Yet he had been the one to win over the Landsmeet, had been the one to sway over the ones who had expected her to be assertive and in control while scorning her for the same, for  _ doing what they wanted. _ Ferelden respected warriors, and while she was many things, she was not a swordswoman. Already they would be hailing him as a hero, the valiant boy-king who triumphed over the darkspawn horde. With the support of the woman who slew the archdemon and ended the Blight, she knew it was over for her. Anora had always been too stubborn and willful for her own good, but she wasn’t  _ stupid _ . 

(If they thought she would just take this lying down, they were wrong. But there were few options open to her from her gilded cage.)

But no, it probably wasn't him that put her in this room of all the ones in the palace, even if he’d been quick-witted enough for it. Much as she disliked the idea of  _ marrying  _ him she still would have done it had he not killed her father - for the good of Ferelden, always for the good of Ferelden. She didn't dislike him, either, for all he'd seemed like a boy of sixteen, not a man of twenty-one when first they met. At the Landsmeet he had even given off something of an authoritative air, though it had been to command her to be led away to Fort Drakon, and she doubted he would truly be petty enough especially after he had cut off her father's head in front of her. But  _ airs _ only counted for part of ruling; the other parts were the actual command of politics. That had yet to be proven. If he was to be king of her beloved Ferelden, she sincerely hoped he would at least have advisors to take the ropes while he learned what he had yet to be taught. 

It could have been Aliena Surana. The newly-named _ Hero of Ferelden _ , probably clever and well-read enough to pull off such a slander. Her guards liked to talk, her door did not insulate against all sound, and those shreds of conversation had informed her of Surana’s new titles - Warden-Commander of Ferelden, Lady Chancellor of the Kingdom, Arlessa of Amaranthine. It was a wonder she didn't collapse under all of them, given how small she was. And while Surana had ensured her before the Landsmeet she would not be in the picture when her marriage to Alistair began, with the engagement called off she had taken up a place right by his side again in easily the worst-kept secret in all of Ferelden. But no, she did not seem the type to swoop down to frivolous jabs at an already-deposed monarch. 

No, if it was  _ anyone _ insulting her with the damask room it would probably be Eamon. He’d practically been the ringleader of the nobles leading the pack in shaming her not only for her seeming inability to produce a child, but for her parents' common blood "tainting" the bloodline of his beloved, belated sister. Nevermind that in all the years and all the affairs Cailan had during their marriage not a single one produced a bastard even without her needing to intervene, and her father's heroism at the River Dane more than proving he deserved his titles and honours. Her father’s strategies, his guerilla band of Night Elves had done more than Eamon ever had to secure Ferelden’s freedom during the occupation. Her father had bled, had given so much for the land that made him, yet they still scorned that same blood for its “peasant defects.”

There had been times during her rule when she wondered why she even _tried_ with this country. Ferelden - wild, ornery, greedy Ferelden, who took everything she gave it with a thoughtless smile, and she had long learned to stop expecting anything back. The common people loved her - that is, the version of herself she put on for them every morning with her stays and gowns, the ever-smiling, graceful queen. The nobles would _never_ love her so long as the royal nursery remained bereft of children’s laughter and her lineage smeared with farmer’s ancestry. 

At the end of the day, though, she knew why she clung so stubbornly to this nation that would never reciprocate in kind what she had sacrificed for it. Ferelden was many things to Anora - a grand, majestic lady resplendent in furs demanding bent knees and constant deference; a stubborn child kicking and thrashing and refusing to stand on its own; a mighty ship like those she had seen from her window as a child launched from Gwaren’s harbours; a creaking old dinghy, barely able to sail by itself, slowly sinking and resistant to all her attempts to save it. But most of all, it was her first love and the sole captor of her heart, even if it would never love her back. She was Teyrn Loghain Mac Tir’s daughter, and it could be no less. 

She had been waltzing with the lady for years, the complicated dance of politics it had taken her years to learn from observing her father at work, something she had been trained for long before she had ever stood beside Cailan and been crowned as his wife and queen. She had been expected to be nothing but the mother of his children, but she took that role and moulded it to her own. It had been her steering the kingdom for the years they had been married, and everybody knew it. Instinctively she knew it was over; she would not be sitting the throne again any time soon. The crown had almost sat atop her head again, but it had been her own reaction to her father's blood dripping over her dress that had stolen all her senses and snatched it away from her. She had lost. She could bite, scratch, fight, but to what avail? Maric's bastard won, and to the victor go the spoils. But the thought of handing her beloved grand lady over to an amateur dancer who didn't know the first thing about where to put his feet and stepped on her toes? Was it any wonder why she hesitated to take the crown off her head?

The clicking noise at her door shook Anora out of her thoughts. She snapped up from her plush chair, straightening herself upright as she awaited whoever waited on the other side of the door.  _ Is this to be the end at last? Is the new king having my head cut off? It's admittedly what I would do in his shoes - eliminate the threat to his reign early before his own incompetency starts a demand for a Mac Tir restoration and begins a rebellion.  _ She turned her backbone to iron, her face to stone, and held her shoulders back, the picture of regality she had worn so often it  _ became  _ her. 

One by one the locks slid undone, and the door swung open to reveal a series of guards at the entryway.  _ Guards, guards, always guards _ ; Maker, she swore she would never see the end of them, nor ever experience the ceasing of their ever-watchful gaze. Once, she found some measure of comfort in their presence. Now ever since her imprisonment by Rendon Howe, she just wanted to be rid of them.

The man at their head spoke, a flame-haired fellow she thought she might have recognized - Ser Gilmore, she thought his name might have been. He had been one of the Cousland knights before the fall of Highever, and though Fergus Cousland had been found and given his ancestral title, he had evidently not returned with the Teyrn to Castle Cousland. “Lady Anora.” 

She still wasn’t used to the loss of her royal address - maybe she would never get used to it, but she didn’t let herself so much as flinch as she turned to face them. “Gentlemen. To what do I owe this pleasure?” she kept her voice flat, her profile expressionless as she spoke to them, careful not to show a single sign of weakness. No matter what, she was still a  _ queen _ , the picture of royal grace.

“Your presence is requested by Chancellor Surana, my lady. If you would follow us, my lady…?”

Anora could detect a hint of awe and apprehension in the slight strain of his voice, and she had to smile, if only in a slight upward twitch of her lip.  _ Good. _ She still had that much power, at least. While she normally disliked being ordered about, she rustled up her skirts and answered, “of course,” with a dignified smile. Even if she was to be led to the gallows here and now, she would do so with the grace befitting a queen. 

But the path the guards led her down was not to the dungeons, as she thought might have been their destination. She contained her surprise into rapid blinking as instead, the guards led her out to the gardens, where she was struck by the sudden scent of flowers. Though much of the city had been devastated by darkspawn to the point of being unrecognizable, from what she had seen from her small window, the garden was still much the same as when she had walked its paths as Queen. Beautiful, if a bit bare; Ferelden could not afford as many exotic flowers as, say, the Empress of Orlais could for her garden, but its native roses bloomed as brightly as before the Blight from bushes and brambles, as if completely untouched by either darkspawn taint or the neglect caused by the civil war. 

At its centre was the woman who had summoned her - Aliena Surana, sitting at a table, covered in cloth laced with white trim, almost as if it was a girl’s tea party. Every time she saw the younger woman, it was a stark reminder anew of just how  _ young _ she was - just nineteen, from what she remembered, two years shy of Alistair's twenty-one. A skinny string bean girl in a spring green dress, dwarfed by the mabari dozing at her feet. Anora had heard the slaying of the archdemon had nearly killed her, and though time (and healing magic) had restored some vitality to her - blooms of colour in her cheeks, new splashes of freckles across her skin, no hint of the shadowed bags that had haunted her eyes - she still looked as doll-like and fragile as ever. The elaborate braided hairstyle revealing the slim points of her ears only emphasized how delicate she seemed.

She had long played the card of letting others underestimate her due to her appearance, disguising the depths of her acumen through honeyed words and graceful smiles, and she had come to  _ respect _ the girl when she had been simply a Grey Warden who had managed to evade her father for so long, but even then she had to think -  _ this is one of the people I'm expected to hand my kingdom to? One of the  _ children?

It was pointless to deny her titles now, however. Not when the younger woman potentially held Anora’s life in her hands. As the guards left her side and stationed themselves surrounding the table, Anora glided up with educated elegance and made a curt nod to the sitting elf. “Lady Surana.”

Surana stood up and stepped into a slight curtsey - clumsy, almost childish; like she barely knew where to put her feet and was trying her desperate hardest to not fall flat on her face. But despite this, Anora could detect no hint of hesitation or fear when she greeted her with a cool and composed "your grace."

Anora could not stop her mouth falling in surprise, if only for a moment, before she hurriedly shut it again and twisted her lip into stone-faced dignity. She hadn’t expected to hear her regal style from the woman who had played one of the chiefest roles in her deposition. "Strange you would call the queen you just dethroned by the title you denied her at the Landsmeet."

"It's the honorific I owe to the  _ Dowager  _ Queen of Ferelden. It would be stupid of me to wholly deny your marriage to Cailan now, would it?" The hints of a smile teased the elven woman's lips. Anora did not smile back. Surana coughed, a feeble attempt to break the strained ropes of tension hanging between the two of them, before motioning to an empty chair opposite where she had been sitting moments ago. "Please, have a seat."

Even though the sound of  _ dowager _ did sting, and she was loath to follow orders of any sort from her, the two women sat down opposite each other, with the weight of a kingdom between them. Anora noted the elven woman’s hands shake slightly as she poured streams of dark liquid into two matching cups, pushing one towards Anora with a smile that she again did not return.  _ Coffee _ , she recognized the smell, that Antivan drink made by straining beans that she’d tried once and thoroughly detested. With a miniscule quirk of the eyebrow she doubted Surana would have noticed, she stirred a lump of sugar into her cup, even though she had no plans to drink the stuff whatsoever. Surana was not the  _ type _ for poison, but the simple act of stirring the drink in steady circles had almost a calming effect on her.  _ Anything to keep my cool now. _

“How are you finding your accommodations, your grace? I trust that you are comfortable?” 

Anora was the slightest bit annoyed at how casual she sounded, but did her best to be composed. “As well as I can be when I have been stripped of my crown and shut in a dead usurper’s chamber for his mistresses.”

Surana winced. “I apologize for putting you in that specific room, but it was Eamon’s idea, and I didn’t know of the significance until much later. I would have suggested moving you entirely but… I’m hoping that will be wholly unnecessary, starting today.”

_ So it had been Eamon, as expected. And just what is Surana planning, calling me out here like this. _

“You can drink that coffee, you know, I haven’t poisoned it or anything,” Surana teased. Anora did not fail to notice the strains of false optimism tinging Surana’s voice, nervousness coating the younger woman’s words no matter how much she tried to hide it. 

“That is not as reassuring as you might think,” but nonetheless, Anora brought the cup to her lips and sipped. The bitter strains of the liquid stung on her tongue; the sugar hadn’t done much to help at all.

Surana shrugged. “I prefer defeating my enemies with ice and lightning, Your Grace, not poison. That’s Zevran’s area of expertise, not mine.” 

Anora didn’t want to waste any more time on this, not on this idle banter that would get them nowhere. “Enough dancing around the matter, Surana. You can’t have called me here simply for a cup of coffee and a chat,” Anora almost snapped, before catching herself and returning to her natural cold, pressed voice. “What are you really here to discuss with me?”

Surana pursed her lip, perhaps a little miffed that she had lost the reins of the conversation, but she bent down to retrieve something - a scroll of embossed vellum, a quill, and an inkwell. Without any hint of dramatic flourish, Surana unfurled the scroll, and one of the first words on the page caught Anora’s eye as soon as she had a second’s glimpse of it.

_ Gwaren. _

It had been many years since she had called it home, but she remembered it well. It was where she was born, the haven she had run eagerly amok in as a little girl. The name was Old Tevene for  _ salt pool _ , and if she closed her eyes, she could still taste the saline air on her tongue and teeth.  _ Home. _ A home she had not seen in years, but  _ home _ nonetheless. She could be happy there again, away from the court that was slowly choking her, away from the nobles that scorned her for her supposedly barren womb and her lack of noble lineage, against the constant expectation to put babies in the nursery -

No. She couldn’t believe it. They were childish, yes; teenagers playing a game they did not know the rules to, but she did not think they could be  _ this _ foolish. There had to be some sort of catch.

Her eyes ran down the sheet, quickly taking in all the words as quickly as she could. Just as she thought - in exchange for swearing fealty to the new king, she would be granted the teyrnir of Gwaren by the crown, as well as a pension as Cailan’s widow and a large stipend to assist in reconstruction of her territory, as Gwaren had sustained heavy damage thanks to the Blight.

Swearing fealty to Alistair and accepting him as king was not as bitter of a thought as it had been as the days following the Landsmeet, she admitted, where the sting of the loss of the crown she had worn for five long years along with losing her father pressed deeply into her. No, even before the Landsmeet she had seen signs that he had  _ future _ potential, if not potential right this second, and the nobles of the land had already given the throne to him regardless. She would have no chance until the next Landsmeet, by which point Alistair would have already likely cemented himself in the hearts of the people. Reconstruction was a much easier feat than change, and the Blight had given him the opportunity to do just that handed right on a silver platter. 

Anora unpressed her lips from the thin line they had formed. “So is this your idea of a compromise. Lose my crown, keep my head,” she could not disguise her wariness as she shook her head. "A consolation prize for losing my father and the throne at the Landsmeet."

"Teyrn Loghain is dead. You were his only daughter. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how inheritance works, your grace," she quipped, quirking an ebony eyebrow. 

"As I recall, my father was stripped of all his titles, and all Mac Tir assets were returned to the crown. There is no longer anything for me to inherit."

"Then the crown is free to do whatever it likes with it, is it not? And by the decree of His Majesty King Alistair Theirin, it is to be given to you. As his chancellor, I am here to carry that decree out.” 

Despite her ever-present mask of queenly dignity, she couldn’t restrain the snort of disbelief that escaped her. “And why is his majesty not here to present this offer to me himself? Would I be too much of a stain on his kingly presence?” 

"He decided that it would be too awkward to present this to you himself, actually, considering everything that happened, and I agreed. I’m not cruel enough to make you look into the eyes of your father’s killer and force you to swear fealty to him while the wound of his loss is still fresh.”

“ _ The eyes of my father’s killer _ ,” Anora echoed, her voice calm, but barely hiding her sneer. The resentment that had been simmering since that day had come out in full force in her next words, spilling over her lips before she could stop them. “You promised him mercy, and then you called forth your boy-king to duel him in front of the Landsmeet. You were beside Alistair for twelve months, and you knew his hatred for my father,  _ knew _ he would not show him mercy, and yet  _ after  _ I spoke out against my own flesh and blood in front of all the nobles of the land you handed Alistair his sword and shield and wished him luck as he went to battle. So tell me again, who is my father’s  _ true _ killer?”

Surana’s eyes knit shut. Now more than ever she wanted to rage at the girl, to force an answer out of her, but she quietly fumed as she awaited a reply. Finally, Surana’s lips unglued from each other, and in a voice barely lighter than a whisper, she said, “I suppose I am.” 

“You  _ suppose? _ Tell me, what compelled you to suddenly change your mind about my father? What made you decide that he was no longer worthy of your mercy-”

_ “The alienage!”  _ Surana’s voice devolved into half-shriek, half-anguished cry. Anora was taken aback at seeing the sorrow etched into the girl’s face, the  _ agony _ in her. She noticed with a start that the guards had all bristled, hands on their swords and preparing to strike at the sound of her distress, but with a quick wave of Surana’s hand, their grip on their weapons slackened, and they returned to stoic formation.

Surana steadied herself with deep breaths before she continued speaking. “I grew up in that alienage, Anora. I spent five cold, hard years there, barely hanging onto life before my magic saved me. But if I lived long enough for it…” she watched the other woman take in a deep gulp of air before starting to speak again. “It was seeing those elves caged, thinking of how many of them must have already been sent to Tevinter, and seeing  _ Loghain’s name _ on those slaver’s documents, I- that could have been  _ me _ , if I still lived there. Who knows if girls like me had already been taken away, never to see their families again, I-”

Surana broke off then, staring away as if pointedly trying not to look at Anora as best she could. Surana - no,  _ Aliena _ \- swallowed the lump in her throat, before she took her cup and drained it of its contents before she spoke again, this time in a voice scraped by knives. “I would have said something had there been time to talk before the Landsmeet begun, that I didn’t think there was a way to save your father anymore, and I would have understood perfectly if you decided to withdraw your support then and there. If we hadn’t found those documents in the alienage I would have done my best to spare your father, no matter what Alistair said, but I couldn’t. I just  _ couldn’t. _ ”

Anora felt a tightness in her chest as Aliena stared down into her lap.  _ That money… I questioned where it came from, but he never answered, and I never pressed. He told me it was for the good of Ferelden. The Ferelden he taught me to love _

Her stomach gave a horrible lurch as her jaw clenched.  _ How much of that was true after he sold out citizens to Tevinter?  _ My  _ citizens? _

“Eamon wanted me to sign the death warrant,” Aliena admitted. “For your execution. And Alistair didn’t want to go through with it, but he didn’t think there was any other way. But after what I did, I- I couldn’t do that. Not to you. So I had Teagan draw this up, and I convinced Alistair that this was how we should put things right.” 

Anora had not felt completely lost for words in a long, long time. Words were her weapon in lieu of steel, her armour, her shield against a court determined to hate her simply for who she was. Aliena would never be Alistair’s queen, would never stop having scorn heaped on her simply for the points adorning her ears or her connection to the Fade, and for that she felt a strange twinge of kindred spirit for the girl. 

They would never be making Aliena queen. But she knew the storm brewing in her gaze. She’d recognized it, like an old friend she had not seen in years. She recognized that fire from years of staring into the mirror when she had been a newlywed, determined to do what Cailan would not and  _ rule _ , while her husband played with war and ideals of chivalry that had ended with him on the end of a darkspawn spear, she had steered their country faithfully as its captain. 

She did not think her father’s loss would ever stop smarting in her chest, nor could she ever forget the pain the sight of him struck down in front of her had caused. But her father’s death had really come by his own doing, his refusal to see anyone but himself as capable of saving their beloved country. Perhaps her time had truly come. The Landsmeet had granted Alistair the crown anyways, she was likely just delaying the inevitable, and she would rather have it come in the form of a treatise than as a headsman’s axe to her neck. 

_ I am my father's daughter, but I am  _ not  _ my father. I will learn from his mistakes. I will not die as he did. _

She took a deep breath before she said anything. Before saying anything to Aliena, however, she silently uttered a prayer to the Maker, hoping with all her might  _ please, please, let me be doing the right thing. _ When she opened her mouth again, she said, simply, "Give me the quill, Lady Chancellor." 

Aliena brought her head up hesitantly, confusion in her grimacing and furrowed brows. “Really? You’re sure?”

“I am. Now hand it over to me before I change my mind.”

When she was handed the writing instrument, she dipped it in the inkwell Aliena had set out for her. With a flourish, she signed away her crown and regained her father's teyrnir, in less time than it took to blink. "But if you think this means I will make things easy for you next Landsmeet, you are sorely mistaken. If you and Alistair sink the ship I've put so much work in to keep afloat, I will march back into the throne room and let you have a piece of my mind." 

Aliena smiled as she added her own signature in ratification. "I wouldn't have it any other way, Teyrna Mac Tir."

And despite herself, Anora smiled back.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a challenge to myself after reading one too many Anora-demonizing fics to write as sympathetic of an Anora as I could. I used to dislike her a lot. I was also an idiot. Then I realized just how wonderful she is, _but_ I liked my worldstate with Alistair and Mistress!Warden a bit too much, so this is my compromise.
> 
> Thank you to my Discord buddies for all your help, I couldn't have done it without you. Especially Toshi for just being a darn good writer, and Amanda for bouncing some ideas off me.


End file.
